


would you like to go back?

by Jacks8n



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 03:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16009601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacks8n/pseuds/Jacks8n
Summary: The first time they meet.





	would you like to go back?

He’s nowhere. He gave up everything, and he ended up nowhere.

He’s been nowhere before. On lonely summer afternoons, he drifted boats made of twigs and fishing line on the creek beyond the furthest corn field. That was a small kind of nowhere. The kind of nowhere you can run home from when the sky cracks and rain starts to pour. The kind of nowhere that washes off like dirt in a warm bath.

He’s looked from the comfort of an airship out on peaks so tall and snowy he doubted they’d ever been summited. That’s a shame, he thought. There must be wonders in the woods, just like there are wonders in the woods of Whale Island. He asked Killua whether he’d like to climb them someday. Killua told him to go back to bed. And then he told him sure. Maybe someday.

That was a different kind of nowhere. It made him feel small and insignificant. It made him feel like there wasn’t enough time.

Nowhere has always scared him, but that’s only because it was never really nowhere. It was just someplace he’d never been, someplace untouched, someplace that didn’t invite lingerers. Nowhere was somewhere, and it was somewhere too big and too full to ever be known.

This nowhere is different.

This nowhere has no shape. No movement. It’s still, and vacant, and cacophonously quiet. There are no frogs or winter storms. He can’t get away. It’s the lungs he can’t feel and the hands he can’t feel and the tongue he can’t feel. It’s darkness, but he doesn’t think he’d have a word to describe the absence of light if this was all he’d ever known.

It’s him, and it’s only him, and every second he’s smaller. There’s nothing he can do but wait.

So he does. He waits nowhere and wonders what will happen when even that’s gone.

She blows in like a summer wind.

 _How are you,_ she asks.

I’m nowhere, he tells her.

_You’re Gon._

I am.

_..._

Who are you? he asks, when he begins to fear she’ll leave.

She holds the hand he can’t feel gently. _Would you like to go back?_

I can’t.

_You can._

I gave up everything.

_Not everything can be given up._

…

_Gon._

…

_They’ll miss you._

…

_It’s completely up to you._

…

Just once more.

**Author's Note:**

> hey just realized ive once again written a fic that takes place in a hospital
> 
> inspired by [amelia's post](https://blog.ameliakester.com/post/178125974198/hey-hey-hey-hey-hey-hunter-x-hunter-yoshihiro) nd the excellent writing of george saunders who is surprisingly difficult to bounce off of just cause of how excellent his work is. like im really shooting myself in the foot by opening with him and proving that your time would be infinitely better spent reading his shit BUT HEY im an egomaniac and ill catch up one day so this is still getting posted
> 
> jacks8nwriting.tumblr.com


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